8 Major Facebook Scams and How They can be Avoided

According to an estimate Facebook population has crossed 1.79 billion monthly active users. Unfortunately, fraudsters and scammers are also part of the Facebook population. They are making a lot of money through the use of scamming other people on the Facebook. In fact Facebook scams are emerging as business through the use of different tactics and tricks to scam people.

As Facebook has evolved and acquired more services, scams have evolved too. Facebook users are being targeted on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram and many other social media apps. The addition of interactive, one-to-one communications has opened Facebook users to more social media attacks. Remember, Scammers do follow the users from platform to platform.

Top Facebook Scams

Here are popular Facebook scams that are very common and how we can avoid them.

1. Profile Color Conversion

“Color Changer v1.3” is actually a survey scam application. It promises to let you change your Facebook profile color to something other than blue. If you authorize the app to access your Facebook account it will send spam messages to all your friends. So try to avoid being an artist while using Facebook and use Facebook as it is.

2. Free Items and Offers

Don’t expect to get anything for free just by completing a survey. If you do, you’ll end up spamming all your contacts with bogus messages about the fake offer.

3. Free iPads & iPhones

Messages stating that you can win a free iPad or iPhone are usually just a thought-out marketing trick. It’s becoming more popular now a days so the best practice is to avoid clicking links on Facebook at all. First you should’t any of these kind of offer unless they are from popular brand’s official page.

4. Spying your Profile

This scam claims that it will show you who has been viewing your profile and who has blocked you from theirs friends, but there is nothing like that exist on Facebook because Facebook doesn’t provide any information to developers.

5. Free Credits

Basically you shouldn’t trust anything that offers something if you play this game you would get credit for free. It’s a big Facebook scam.

6. Avoid helping on Facebook

If you get a message from a friend saying he has no money and then asks you for help, don’t answer this type of scamming maybe his Facebook account has probably been hacked by scammers. You can verify this also by asking your mutual friends if they received an identical message.

7. False Privacy Settings

Scammers mainly want to get your login details, so make sure to verify messages claiming to be from Facebook security. Take control over your privacy settings and manage the privacy of your posts; always verify the information you receive and don’t spread messages just because they have been shared by your friends.

8. Don’t Confuse Quizzes

Fake news stories and surveys that promise free things actually harvest personally identifiable information about the user with the intent to use this for malicious or fraudulent reasons. People often unknowingly give permission for their data to be passed on. “Consumers readily click ‘accept’ on terms and conditions for Facebook apps and quizzes, often without a second thought. And in this way scammers harass the public.

Facebook is a Heaven for Scammers

All these are recent examples of convincing Facebook scams where fraudsters pretending to be trusted brands have mocked up pages in search of likes, comments, shares and more from unwitting users. These scams are a sign of how Facebook is a magnet for cyber-criminals who see its nearly 1.6 billion monthly active users as 1.6 billion tempting targets.

Scammer tactics are changing constantly, meaning that if Facebook tries to automatically block anything that might be a scam, it will end up blocking legitimate content and annoying users. As the opportunity for cyber criminals to launch attacks through Facebook are reduced, cyber criminals will look for alternate ways to launch attacks and to make money. Users will have to start taking more control of their own privacy and security.

Facebook scams are the most common online attack method in malware chart. Scammers take advantage of real-world events with fake news links. Scammers are not only stealing login credentials but asking for victim’s payment information, too. Best way to avoid all these scams is not to use Facebook or any other social networking sites. Instead, take time and meet your friends or avail offers and things on official websites.